1/7/2013

The latest inanity from Nancy Pelosi, as presented here by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, weaves together several themes that have emerged during the budget battles: the Democrats’ dictatorial nature, their use of Congress as a scapegoat for overspending, their recharacterization of the debt ceiling debate as a debate over whether America will pay its debts, and their total ignorance of the Constitution.

Pelosi demonstrates the Democrats’ dictatorial leanings and disregard for the separation of powers by pronouncing that Obama should set his own debt ceiling:

[I]f I were president, I would use the 14th Amendment, which says that the United States will always be paying … I would just go do it, right.

This is in keeping with the Democrats’ desire to repeal the 22nd Amendment and let Obama serve forever. They simply want to arrogate all powers to the executive — and in perpetuity, it seems, or as long as Obama is in office, anyway — because they control the executive, while in the legislative branch they have to deal with that pesky House, which is always so annoying with all the talk of cutting spending and such.

Pelosi continues the theme, announced by Obama this past weekend, that we are where we are because Congress has spent irresponsibly — and that raising the debt ceiling isn’t about future debt, but paying our past debts:

But the Congress has incurred much of this debt. So what are we saying? We incurred it, but we’re not going to pay it? If you want to say we’re not going to do it so much in the future, well, that’s another thing, but you can’t say I’m not paying my past debts.

One thing I will not compromise over is whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they’ve already racked up,” Obama said in his weekly address. “If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic.

This is, of course, remarkably dishonest. While is technically true that Congress’s participation is necessary to pass spending bills, the Obama/Pelosi claim airbrushes history by omitting the facts that Obama demanded a trillion dollar stimulus, and that he has piled up more debt in his four years ($6 trillion) than was ever thought possible for a single president in a single term.

The kicker to Morrissey’s post, of course, is Pelosi’a laughable ignorance of the Constitutional provision on which she claims to rely. Is it the Eleventh Amendment? The Fourteenth? Something something blah blah Constitution:

While it is tempting to end the post with a good laugh about Pelosi’s rank buffoonery, I want to make another pitch, as I did this past weekend, for Republicans not to make raising the debt ceiling the place where they take their stand.

They want to play the “no negotiation” game? Obama, Mr. Stimulus, wants to blame CONGRESS for overspending?

Fine. Here’s what you do.

You draw up a budget that has what you want. No more whining about what the other side will agree to. Just figure out what you want and then pass it.

And then approve nothing else. Whatsoever.

No continuing resolutions. Either pass our balanced budget, propose one of your own, or the government stops getting funded.

Yes, it’s risky electorally. But continuing the charade where nobody takes a stand is much riskier in much more important ways. And the last major publicized government shutdown, in the 1990s . . . wasn’t that a precursor to government surpluses? Does anybody believe the surpluses would not have happened without a Republican Congress willing to shut down the government on principle?

OK, then.

Here is the speech I would make if I were in Congress:

Recently, President Obama and Nancy Pelosi blamed Congress for racking up spending. And you know what? They’re right. Although the spending that got us in this mess was sought by presidents — first President Bush, then President Obama — it is ultimately here in the House that spending bills must originate. We are culpable for this debt crisis, just as they are. Because we went along.

I am taking the words of President Obama and Minority Leader Pelosi to heart. We are going to raise the debt ceiling, so that the government can continue to meet its past obligations in regular order. But now, we are going to step up and present a budget that is responsible. This new budget will not raise taxes any further than the increases that were requested by the Democrats earlier this year. But it will, for the first time, meet the same requirement that every responsible household has for its own budget: that there is enough money coming in to pay for the expenses we are incurring.

I don’t know if Americans realize that, under this president, we are now spending a trillion dollars every year more than we take in. I don’t know if people realize that our national debt has gone up $6 trillion under this president in four years. That’s more than the debt went up in 8 years of President Bush’s presidency.

This is a spending problem. You could impose a 100% tax rate on every millionaire in this country and it wouldn’t begin to pay off our $16 trillion debt. It would not close the gap. Only cutting spending will close the gap. And that is what we are doing today.

President Obama and Minority Leader Pelosi are right to blame Congress for overspending. Even though they asked for all that overspending, we gave it to them. Well, we’re not going to do it any more.

I want to stress that we are open to negotiation on how we pass a balanced budget. If President Obama wants to make a counterproposal that balances the budget in a different way, we will listen. But what we won’t do is consider any counterproposal that spends more money than we are taking in.

President Obama will say that balancing the budget hurts our ability to “invest” in various programs he thinks are important. “Investment,” of course, is the word he likes to use for “spending.” And we simply can’t afford to continue spending more than we take in, no matter how lofty or worthy the goals might sound.

If President Obama refuses to sign this budget, or propose an alternative that balances the budget for this year, then we will stop funding the government. The president and the media will say the Republicans are forcing a government shutdown, and I guess the polls say that the American public is going to blame us for it. I’d like to think y’all are smarter than that, but my colleagues and I are willing to take the political heat.

This is the moment. If not now, when?

This is a moral issue. By spending more on ourselves, we are raising taxes on our children. We are mortgaging their futures so we can spend too much today. That’s not right. Our children don’t have a vote. If somebody explained to them what is being done to their futures, they would probably stand up and scream: NO! But they can’t. So we have to speak for them.

Yes, taking that stand means Republicans might be blamed for shutting down the government, even though Democrats are the ones who refuse to pass a balanced budget. But that’s a risk we are willing to take. At a certain point, we all have to ask ourselves: why are we here? Why do we do this job? And it’s to make the country better.

But a nation that cannot get its financial house in order will crumble. Continuing this charade, ladies and gentlemen, is not why I was elected to the U.S. Congress.

Today, we are taking a stand. Today is the day that we say: we are only going to spend what we can afford, and no more.

I met folks who say they can’t pay their current debts if they can’t get overdraft or another credit card. In my opinion, this is not what responsible people say when they are serious about paying down their debts. It’s what people say when they absolutely will not change their intention to spend more.

It’s Obama and Pelosi who are making debt service optional by apparently subordinating it to their pet projects.

Article 1, Section 8 “Congress shall have Power… To borrow Money on the credit of the United States” and Article I, Section 9 “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law”.

Now one could go the messy way and pass a constitutional amendment, but why bother right?

The Republicans do have an advantage here. They went along with the fiscal cliff tax increase because, to not have done so, would have meant a much bigger, automatic tax increase, on everybody — something to which I was not opposed.

But now, the fiscal cliff bill made the 2001/2003/2010 tax cuts for everybody but the most productive Americans permanment, so they are not facing another automatic tax increase again. However, the $110 billion sequester was just pushed back until March. If Congress does nothing, we get an automatic $110 billion spending cut, and I definitely support that! I might prefer making the cuts in other areas, but even where they are, at least they’ll be there.

If the Republicans have any balls, we’ll get spending cuts. That, of course, is a really big “if.”

But the Congress has incurred much of this debt. So what are we saying? We incurred it, but we’re not going to pay it? If you want to say we’re not going to do it so much in the future, well, that’s another thing, but you can’t say I’m not paying my past debts.

This is, of course, an echo of Obama’s remarks from this past weekend:

One thing I will not compromise over is whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they’ve already racked up,” Obama said in his weekly address. “If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic.

“In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Truth is Oceania’s propaganda ministry. It is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events. The word truth in the title Ministry of Truth should warn, by definition, that the “minister” will self-serve its own “truth”; the title implies the willful fooling of posterity using “historical” archives to show “in fact” what “really” happened. As well as administering truth, the administration deploys a new tongue-in-cheek language amongst administrators called Newspeak, in which, for example, truth is understood to mean statements like 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants.”

The idea that the 14th Amendment says that the President can borrow without Congressional authoriziation is ludicrous. There is no rational reading that reaches that. Plus, its idiotic because no sane organization would purchase debt instruments issued by the President without Congressional authority. She’s a blithering idiot.

This dishonest twit Pelosi also started the Democrats’ practice of intentionally failing to pass budgets. A practice the Democrats have continued.

The answer is as you say, Patterico, for the House to refuse to pass any more continuing resolutions. Pass a budget period.

Why? What’s the problem we’re trying to fix? That our collection of Constitutional provisions the Democrats can ignore too small?

This is an entirely bogus argument and we don’t need an amendment to fix it. What Pelosi is saying is that one Congress can bind another Congress. It doesn’t matter if the people replace a Congress that is spending recklessly with another Congress that promises to alter course. Pelosi is saying it can’t alter the course of spending.

We have no moral or legal obligation to borrow the money to pay her debts.

this is how people start thinking once it sinks in that their deeply perverted constitution-molesting supreme court justice practices honey badger jurisprudence with a gusto never before seen outside of certain exotic third world enclaves

Milhouse, I’m not yet convinced that the coin idea is actually legal but regardless, I think it would be great for the GOP if Obama implemented it. The amount of ridicule possible for us to use against Democrats by comparing them to Zimbabwe would be a huge PR boon.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s purpose is to ensure that the southern states pay for the debts incurred during the Civil War; and to deny payment by the reestablished Union of debts created by the Confederate government.

Other than that, no one is denying the validity of our current debt. We’re just saying you can’t take out more.

And again, as silly as the argument is, it is an argument. One that Obama can use to claim the debt limit doesn’t bind !*THE PRESIDENT*! and with the implication that they either lump it or impeach him.

After all, who would have thought Obama could make recess appointments when the Senate claimed it was in session? Or ordered the EPA to issue as regulations things the Congress refused to pass? Or fought a war in Libya without Congressional authorization?

Why should this be any different? Obama is accreting Imperial power. Now he’s using the Newtown thing as his Reichstag fire to grab all the guns.

Other than that, no one is denying the validity of our current debt. We’re just saying you can’t take out more.

Yes, but the argument is that if we don’t borrow more we can’t service the existing debt, and are thus calling it into question. (This claim, that not servicing the debt is tantamount to questioning its validity, is itself illogical; but let’s leave that aside for the moment.)

On its face this seems like nonsense, because there’s more than enough tax revenue coming in each day to service the debt; we don’t need to borrow for that purpose alone. If the Treasury were to prioritize its spending, and dedicate all revenue first to servicing the debt, and only then to other purposes for which Congress has appropriated money, then our creditors would be completely satisfied.

However, the proponents of this argument aren’t quite as stupid as that. They have anticipated this response, and rebut it by saying that since Congress has not prioritized its appropriations, the Treasury lacks the authority to do so. Legally, the argument goes, the Treasury’s obligation to pay interest on T-bills as it comes due, and its obligation to pay for the Basket Weaving Hall of Fame, are of equal rank, and it has no authority to stiff the basket weavers in order to pay the creditors. The USA’s bills must be paid in the order that they come due, and thus if the basket-weavers’ grant comes in first all the tax revenue must go to that, and then there will be nothing left for the creditors. And since, goes the argument, since the 14th amendment prohibits stiffing the creditors, the President is left with no choice but to borrow for that purpose.

This is a clever argument, but alas it’s too clever for its own good. Spot the logical fallacy it contains.

After all, who would have thought Obama could make recess appointments when the Senate claimed it was in session? Or ordered the EPA to issue as regulations things the Congress refused to pass? Or fought a war in Libya without Congressional authorization?

The NLRB issue has been kept out of the courts, precisely because the administration is afraid it will be struck down the moment it can be. There is no basis for supposing that Roberts would uphold it. The other two haven’t come before the court either. Congress has authorised the EPA to make regulations, so I’m not sure on what basis they can be struck down just because they parallel laws that Congress has declined to make. And I can’t think of how the Libya thing could ever come before a court.

No, it was a weak and toothless affirmation of constitutional authority. Quite a difference that.

It was a positive affirmation of constitutional authority over Congress. It stated emphatically that Congress has no authority to require people to buy anything, and that any law that purported to do so would be invalid. And it also stated that Congress could not get around this restriction by disguising a penalty as a tax. It only upheld the law in question by construing it not to contain any requirement.

I suppose the simplest way I can put it for myself, the 14h amendment would only appear to allow a raising of the debt limit if revenues taken in were less than the servicing of the debt. (Which leads to some sort of circular situation if I say so myself.) Which means any spending not associated to paying off that debt would need to be cut and no “new” spending could take place.

Currently, would that mean a federal government shut down? No. Current revenues exceed the servicing of the debt and most, if not all, “required” expenditures (defense, social security, etc.). Does that mean a lot of federal regulatory agencies get shut / cut back. Sure. (Which could clear the way to an economic growth not seen in quite some time.)

Speaking for the opposition, I am opposed to both common sense and principles.

Comment by Leviticus

Is your comment sarcastic, sincere, or humorous?

If it’s sarcastic, then I assume you didn’t watch the video at the link because the interview is over 10 minutes long and Cruz provides a detailed explanation of his idea of common sense and principled solutions to several problems — all of which you are not only free to disagree with but frankly I expect it of you.

If your comment is sincere, then I assume you are defending the Democrats by suggesting they, too believe their actions are based on common sense and principles. Of course, in the past you’ve always claimed you aren’t here to defend the Democrats. Perhaps this is one of many exceptions to your rule.

Or if this is your attempt at humor, it’s very clever. What a bright boy you are, Leviticus.

I suppose the simplest way I can put it for myself, the 14h amendment would only appear to allow a raising of the debt limit if revenues taken in were less than the servicing of the debt.

Actually not even then, but that’s a separate argument that I didn’t want to go into in my long comment above. So I’ll do it here: besides the logical fallacy in their main argument, their entire premise fails because failing to service the debt does not call it into question. When you tell a creditor that you can’t pay a debt, are you thereby disputing it?! No, you’re not. You’re acknowledging it, but saying that you haven’t got the money to pay it. There’s nothing in the 14th amendment to prevent the USA from doing the same.